


grief is the price we pay for love

by Zephyroh



Category: Hololive, HololiveEN, Virtual Streamer Animated Characters, holoMyth
Genre: Angst, F/F, i made myself sad so i decided to inflict it upon all of you as well, no beta: we die like yagoo's dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:26:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28916079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zephyroh/pseuds/Zephyroh
Summary: When Gura dies, Amelia is there, and it’s the most natural thing in the world.When Amelia dies, it feels like a hard-earned closure, because she was lost long beforehand. Like ashes falling on a silent battlefield, the only sound that remains is the echo in one’s memory.
Relationships: Gawr Gura/Watson Amelia (hololive)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 136





	grief is the price we pay for love

> _“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”_  
>  _― Leo Tolstoy_

When Gura dies, Amelia is there, and it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

It's a point in time Amelia had always avoided, because she never thought she'd be ready for it. But after years of time travelling, of adventuring, of grief, of wonders, of endless loss and joy, she accepted that things that are meant to happen will happen and trying to fight it would be like trying to breathe underwater. Spread throughout a discontinued timeline, she had learned what acceptance was.

First, she avoided the topic entirely. Although she had made a habit of telling the girls about her travels in the future, to tease them, to warn them, or simply to pull a prank set up years in advance, but only minutes for her. She had joked about 'Grandma Gura', teasing her about her wrinkles and flappy gills, but not once had she mentioned the after part. She couldn't. Gura noticed but didn't bring it up.

Then, she had gotten angry at Gura who once casually joked, "What will you do when I'm not there anymore to handle your ass, Watson'' she had laughed. But Ame's body had tensed, eyes darkened. "Don’t say stuff like that, it's not funny.", she had snapped. And Gura nodded, for as much as she could be free and careless, she had wisdom that Amelia didn't have yet, and so she never mentioned it again. She knew Amelia wasn't ready, so she would wait.

Amelia was still so young, Gura had thought once. So full of reckless hope, and her heart hurt at the thought that this naivety would inexorably fade away one day, so Gura would entertain her foolish rambling, maybe even letting herself get seduced by the idea. "You could come with me, I'm sure I can tinker with the watch, and we'll travel together!'' she had offered once, in a sunny afternoon. The warmth of the sun on her face, and the warmth of her sun in her heart, Gura had considered the idea, playing with the thought. "Yeah, that’d be fun. ", she had answer, not even sure herself if she meant it or not, and Amelia pretended to believe her.

When Amelia failed to avoid the inevitable knowledge that one day, she would have to walk without Gura, she didn’t handle it well. By mistake, she had travelled to far up the timeline, and was forced to face the aftermath. She had never though a simple, carved rock, placed atop a hill, overhanging the vast ocean lit by a rising moon, would pierce her heart that way. Her morbid curiosity forced her to stare ar the words that would haunt her for years – the epitaph that, she would realize much later, she had written herself. Knees again wet grass, fingers grazing the soft, oh so cold, smooth rock, the weight of mortality dawned on her, and she was drowning. She had stayed for minutes, for hours, maybe for days. What does time even mean, when all it does is ripping your apart by a thousand cuts? When Ame return, Gura noticed the shift in her eyes, and her heart tighten in her chest, because she knew what it meant. Amelia was growing up.

When Gura dies, Amelia is there, and Gura was waiting for her. No words are exchanged because they don’t need to be. The deep understanding between two being, built which each moment spent together, each laugh, each cry, each kiss, each joke, each touch, each nod exchanged from afar in a crowded room, each glance, each declaration, it renders words unnecessary. So she just leans on her shoulder, holding Amelia’s hand against her lips as she draws her last breath, but she’s smiling because she knows that the world will keep on turning, the sun moon keep on rising, the birds will keep on chiming, and her sun will keep on shining.

* * *

When Amelia dies, it feels like a hard-earned closure, because she was lost long beforehand. Like ashes falling on a silent battlefield, the only sound that remains is the echo in one’s memory.

Human physiology was not adapted to time travel – it’s an immense environmental stress that a normal (i.e human) organism was never designed for. From the physical implications – the toil of jumping timeline, the microaggression of the outside environment at different point in history – to the ensuing cognitive dissonance, the brain and body are not prepared for the sustained choc that is time travel. Amelia Watson was a brilliant physician in addition to being to a keen detective, and this was no secret to her. She walked hand in hand with this knowledge and made a choice that few humans get to do in their life: embrace the end coming that was coming. Of course, knowing about it, and experiencing it are two totally different things, but she was prepared for it, as much as one can be.

Her friends, her found family, however, were not.

It’s not that they didn’t know – as much as good liar she was, she could never hide it from them, nor did she want to. She had spent too much time alone, estranged from time and from the world with no real anchor, that from the moment she met them, she knew she would spend the rest of her life with them – as long as her constitution would allow her to be.

Of course, being a contrarian in nature, she did try to fight it, at first. She had worked and perfected the Watson concoction to a perfect t, but rather that counteract the assault on her physiology, it merely slowed it down. And with the insidious side effect that her body grew a little too reliant on the substance, it became quickly evident that it was only a matter of time before this temporary band aid would lose its efficiency. So she did the only thing she could – help prepare her family.

But, even if you know pain is coming, it still hurts like a motherfucker when it finally does.

For Kiara, pain was an old friend, an ever-present companion that had the familiar feeling of comfort, like siting by a fire with a cup of tea. She had never been afraid of pain. Similarly, she knew better than most the flimsiness of memory. Each rebirth came with the dread of losing a piece of herself, moments lost to time, and the awful feeling of being incomplete – and while she had learned to deal with it for herself, having to witness it in her friend caught her off guard. She had died a thousand times over, in a thousand way, but nothing quite killed her like Amelia looking at her with stranger’s eyes, asking her who she was. And so she learned, all over again, how to handle a different kind of pain. She was a warrior, after all, and warriors must be strong in the stead of those who can’t be, therefore strong she would be for Amelia.

Legends would tell, someday, the stories of a fire bird, carrying a human all over the world, offering her the only thing she could: transient memories, that, even if doomed to be forgotten, in the instant moment, in the frozen piece of time while they’re experienced, _matter_.

For Ina, madness was an old friend, a dark companion at the back of her mind that settled in the moment she touched a mystical book. She was no stranger to voices in her head, and the constant questioning of what her own voice sounded like. She knew the feeling of waking up a stranger in her own body, wondering if the flashes in her mind memories were, nightmares, or both. But Amelia had loved her, and called her friend through all of it, and so she would reciprocate, always. She stood in Amelia’s life like an immovable force, offering the stability she didn’t have herself. She would make herself a rock for Amelia, she would become her gravity, she would find her when Amelia couldn’t even find herself. If that’s what it took, she could remind her everyday who she was, and she would speak louder than the voice in Amelia’s head.

Stories, whispered in the dead of night in quivering voices, would talk about a person who lost her mind to time, and roamed the shadows to find it again but those stories often missed the most important part: if you look close enough, the shadows, in the shape of eight tentacles wrapped around her like an embrace, would murmur with tenderness ‘’ _Come home._ ’’

For Gura, grief was an old friend. Suspended in the ghastly dichotomy between humanity and longevity, Gura had seen the rise and fall of civilization, war, famine, the horrendous cycle of repeating history, the incredible and terrifying growth of humanity, unstoppable like a universe expanding. In many ways, Gura experienced time in the opposite of Amelia. For the latter, time was a collection of short instants to be gathered amassed, as many as possible, never stopping for the dull moments for there was always something more exciting to be seen, to be appreciated, to be lived. For Gura, happiness lied in the quiet respite of reflection, in the in-between moments where she could engrave it in her mind, and hold it, and shelter it forever like a fickle flame in a storm. Life was not a cluster of moments to be summed up, weighted one against the other, but rather a continuous flow, like a drop of water, joining a stream atop a mountain, trickling down into a river that merges with a tumultuous waterfall which breaks into the sea.

When Amelia sits them down, telling them how she was going to go away, slowly, bit by bit, memory by memory, shard of personality after one another, she greets grief like an old friend. She feels comfortable in sadness, as she does in happiness – and she had chosen long ago that she would experience all of it with Amelia, and so she does, until the end.

No songs could ever encompass the magnitude of a love that transcend time and space, though many have tried. But how to you translate the wailing of a heart, as old as the Earth? How do you find the words to describe a love that would move heaven and abysses, and tear at time itself for just the hint of a smile, the sound of a laugh, the feel of a touch? How do you beg remembrance from a mind that has been through too much already?

Gura had never been very good with words, so instead, she kisses Amelia.

For Calli, Death is an old friend. Quite literally, as it is. Death is to her as the sun rising and setting in a circadian rhythm for humans: natural, inevitable, as obvious as a heartbeat. So why did she feel like stopping the sun the sky? Fairness had never been relevant in the matter of life and death. Some people felt the need to hold on to any sliver of hope, anything that could alleviate their fear, from karma to religion, but Calli knew none of it mattered, in the end. A life had a beginning and an expiration date, and everything in between was confetti. But when she laid eyes on her friend, eyes and mind weathered by the exhaustion of a life well lived, and she could think was: _It’s not fair_. What’s she thought was: ‘Amelia should have had more time’. What she really meant was: ‘I wish I had more time with Amelia’. And so, this day, the apprentice of Death learned the insidious grasp of selfishness on her heart, once cold, now thawed in the sunshine. She pretended not to feel the wetness on her cheek. She pretended not to lean into Kiara’s comforting touch. She pretended it was just another day on the job.

But when Amelia took her hand for the last time, all of that faded away. The pain and the hurt and the grief, and the weight of a life on her shoulders, it all disappeared in Amelia’s eyes who let out a small laugh. ‘’I think I’m a bit scared, but also not really. Does that make sense?’’. Calli laughed with her, ringing of lightness and sorrow.

As Amelia turned to face her family for the last time, she couldn’t help but smile, her grin wide as ever.

She did always have the best luck in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> so, it just started as a little thing i had in my head and decided to bully the gc with, and then i couldn't stop writing it, made myself genuinly sad in the process, so I'd figure I's share the pain because why not
> 
> Feel free to yell at me, I deserve it, but also I'm not sorry


End file.
